BIANA: They do! Sophie has Ella the Elephant, Keefe has Mrs. Stinkbottom (we’re not sure what she’s supposed to be but Keefe claims she’s a gulon) and Fitz has Mr. Snuggles
KEEFE: and here’s a picture of fitz looking like a dork with his stuffed dragon
BIANA: Keefe, you have that set to your phone background
if i dropped an essay (dunno if it’d be mini or full fledged) on the potential symbolism behind fitz dyeing his hair pink, would y’all be ready for it?
hmmmmm, this is an excellent question. we have basis in shannon's word for multiple hair colors:
-brown (natural hair color, duh)
-green (keefe and dex dyed his shampoo green which somehow made all of his hair neon green and spiky, if i recall correctly, in book 4)
-pink (shannon said, at one point, that if fitz could dye his hair, he'd dye it pink)
so if it were me, i'd pick one of those. depending on how much time the band au covers, you could have fitz's hair be different colors. gonna put me nerding out about colors and narrative stuff under the cut real quick. remember that this is just my thought process on approaching colors - if you're like, 'uh that's unnecessarily complicated,' then don't do it! no worries! pick and choose what you like.
the vibe of the fic in general plays a role in deciding which color you wanna go for.
green has an association with death, since elves wear that to funerals. that doesn't have to apply to your fic, but bringing that mindset in one way or another could be a nice tie-back to canon. green is also the color of life. the emotional connotation of green, in the books, is very complex. it's bittersweet. different hues of green also say different things. neon green, like it was in book 4, is electric. it's loud and bright and it screams, look at me. look at the energy i have. look at all the ways i could shock you. on the other hand, if you went for a more chill shade - like shamrock green - it'd be a lot closer to canon's emotional connotation of green. you could potentially do mint green as well without going way off from canon basis, since fitz likes the flavor of mint, and it'd be kinda funny for him to be like 'yeahhhh so the reason i dyed my hair this color is because it's color of my favorite dessert flavor. biana shut up and stop laughing or i'll drop you into a trash can.' the environment fitz is in could also affect how people (including himself) view the different shades of green. younger generations tend to think of dyed hair as sick af, but older generations usually think dyed hair is weird (/neg).
also, a little bit of storytime - once upon a time, i wanted to dye my hair green, and the shade i wanted wasn't mint green. both my grandma and mom both went 'if you go with any other shade than mint, you're gonna look like a stoner with mental health issues.' (paraphrased.) so uh. yeah.
i said a while back that i'd write an essay on the symbolism of pink haired!fitz, but i haven't done it yet, so i'm not gonna spoil everything i wanna say there. but keep in mind that pink is a color that has a feminine connotation with the general populace, whereas green has a gender neutral connotation with the general populace. obviously, colors don't have gender, but your band au might have fitz in a position of fame, so i thought you might wanna keep it in mind. anyway. back to pink. fitz choosing pink feels more like a statement than him picking green. in canon, green was an accident that he looked at and went 'oh hey, this actually doesn't suck too bad? i kinda like this?'. pink isn't canon canon (yet, i hope) but it feels more like a choice. it feels like him going, 'this is a color that i'm not supposed to like, but i do. so i'm gonna make it a part of me, and you can't stop me.' like with green, and every other color ever, different hues of pink have different vibes. baby pink is gentle. hot pink has the same vibe as neon green, except a bit more feminine. darker pink is a little less jarring than the other two shades, compared to his natural hair color. a bit more chill. a warmer vibe than shamrock. a little more welcoming.
and then, of course, you could just keep it brown the whole fic. that's understandable.
see, now this is probably where i'm supposed to go, 'yeahhh this is really long so i'm just gonna stop now. hope this helps!' but nah bro. nah. i have a bit more to say and i'm making it your problem :)
what i have in mind that i'd like to talk about is timelines. i have no idea how long your band au is stretching out, in terms of word count and time placement. i have no idea if there are any flashbacks or memories or non-linear narrative things going on. and so i am bringing timelines to the table.
let's start with thinking about the timeline we might have in canon, when it comes to fitz's hair. we have brown, green very briefly, back to brown, and maybe if shannon lets fitz dye his hair a color he chooses, pink at the end. if you want to have fitz's hair be different colors at different times in this universe, you could use a template similar to that. or you could do something entirely different, depending on the events you have in mind! maybe fitz never gets green hair, and goes straight to pink. maybe fitz gets green hair, and decides to keep it and never goes to pink. maybe fitz never dyes it at all, because he's comfortable with brown. it's up to you!
ok. now i'm gonna shut up. after a few more sentences. 1. hope that wasn't a waste of your time and 2. if you need ideas and second opinions on how your band au plot affects fitz's hair color, lmk and 3. finally shutting up, have a great rest of your day
Some pink haired!Fitz doodles for warmup that I colored. Also,,,,,, if Fitz didn’t decide to dye his hair pink after Keefe put bleach in his shampoo, then idk what is true
